Nintendo Wii Fanboy

This is something we didn't know: Primus frontman, and all-around awesome dude, Les Claypool, contributed music for Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. To be more exact, he contributed tunes to capture the feel of each of the different races found in the game, which we imagine is quite the potent combo when paired with the lovely game art we've seen.

You see, MTV Multiplayer recently had the Wii version of the game demoed for them, and they walked away pretty impressed with the game's audio offerings. The music seems to be procedural, and changes as the player accomplished tasks in the game world, shifting and reshaping in line with what is happening in the game. All in all, it seems that Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is going to at least provide an interesting audio experience. Let's hope the gameplay is being developed with as much care!

Not familiar with Les and Primus? Head on past the break for a pair of our favorite Primus tunes.

Before you go running off to troll post on various message boards, we'd like to give you some specifics. A recent CNN technology feature details some of the various chips and components found within the forty-dollar Wiimote. Among the Bluetooth converters and accelerometers is a component listed as an "audio translator," which "converts analog data such as human speech into a digital data stream. This feature is unused now but will probably be employed in future games." The approximate cost is listed at $2.00.

So, what's the deal? First, there is no actual microphone (a device capable of converting vibrational energy into electrical signals) found within the Wiimote. Though basic electrical engineering principals allow a standard speaker to act in such a fashion, the signal quality and frequency response would be unacceptably low. This chip actually requires an expansion device for it to be used at all. So why add it? It's only two dollars, but this rather unnecessary addition has cost the company several dozen million dollars. We can only assume that Nintendo or significant third parties are planning a title utilizing an expansion microphone, which will be presumably cheap enough to bundle with a title and incur no markup in price.

God knows the masses need a mainstream karaoke game (we know about Karaoke Revolution for the PS2, but it never really took off), and the Wii is just the system to do it. Like a Virginnnnn ... hey!